CITY FOCUS: Brazil battles to stay ahead in coffee war as consumers become more demanding

With just over a fortnight until the World Cup kicks off, not everyone in football mad Brazil is in the mood to celebrate.

The legendary Pele recently criticised his country’s organisation of the tournament, arguing billions of pounds have been spent unwisely.

Although condemning the outbreaks of violence, he sympathised with the protests staged around the country and conceded that some of the £6.5bn spent – including on 12 new and refurbished stadiums – would have been better invested in schools and hospitals.

The protests highlight the deep rooted problems of a country which is still racked by poverty and crime but is often viewed through rose-tinted glasses.

But the World Cup also presents a unique shop window for one of the world’s emerging powerhouses – as well as Brazil’s glittering footballing talents. Brazil is part of the so called ‘Bric’ (Brazil, Russia, India and China) group of fast-growing economies, although its breakneck expansion has slowed. Coffee has been a central part of its economy for many years.

Brazil remains by some distance the biggest coffee producing country in the world, accounting for roughly a third of the 150m bags made every year. (The second is, perhaps surprisingly, Vietnam).

It is also the second largest consumer of coffee, after America, and has 274,000 coffee farms.

Booming exports of anything from ships to cereals and iron ore means the country is far less reliant on coffee than it was when Brazil won the 1970 World Cup in Mexico.

But it still represents a key part of its economy, raking in around $8bn (£4.8bn) last year and accounting for more than 3 per cent of its exports.

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The industry is being forced to cater for consumers who are becoming more demanding – just look at the fancy coffee shops springing up around London and other cities and towns in the UK.

Coffee purists may scoff, but pod-maker Nespresso, part of the Nestle food empire, is gaining a foothold in Brazil’s giant coffee industry. The brand is perhaps best known for the slightly cheesy TV ads featuring Hollywood’s George Clooney.

But the real driving force behind the brand are people like Alvaro Antonio, 47, a coffee farmer based just outside Carmo de Minas, a small town more than 400km North East of Sao Paulo.

The farm has been in the family since 1870. But like many farmers, he has had to adapt to challenges imposed by changing tastes and a rapidly growing economy – which include spiralling labour costs.

Carlos Santana, an economist working for global commodity trader Ecom, said: ‘Labour costs have been rising a lot.

‘This is particularly difficult for the farmers in mountainous areas where they can’t mechanise and have to use workers to pick the cherries.’

This is one of the reasons why the standard – or ‘traditional’ – coffee that Alvaro, right, and his family have produced for generations has become less profitable.

Several years ago he switched to focus on premium coffee, which sells for between £160 and £215 for a 60kg bag, compared with £65 to £80 for standard coffee sold to the domestic market.

Nespresso came knocking on his door three years ago as it was looking to expand its network of farm suppliers in Brazil and heard of Alvaro’s prize-winning coffee.

Around 30pc of the coffee on his firm is now sold to Nespresso, and shipped to factories in Switzerland, where it is packed into small capsules – or pods – used in coffee machines.

These capsules, as well as Nespresso’s coffee machines, are sold around the world each year to 60 markets with the firm sourcing its coffee from countries spanning from Guatemala to Ethiopia. The UK is the fastest growing market, with sales hitting £100m last year.

Most of us take our morning cup of coffee for granted. But its production is a complex, time consuming and laborious task.

During the harvest season, which tends to runs from May to August, Alvaro hires workers to pick the coffee cherries – only the ripe ones will do. The most prized cherries are the yellow Bourbon.

The cherries are transported to a machine which ensures all the unripe or bad cherries are put to one side.

The ripe cherries are then put in a machine called a de-pulper, which removes the skin and pulp. They are then laid out to dry in the sun.

Workers rake the coffee beans for hours on end in the searing heat. Typically this takes around 10-15 days, after which the parchment around the dried bean is removed. The beans are then transported to a local laboratory – Nespresso uses a local coffee exporter Carmo Coffees where a sample is roasted and tasted by ‘cuppers’.

If they pass muster they are then sent to Nespresso for approval.

If it gives the coffee the thumbs up then the beans are shipped from Santos, a port in the Sao Paulo region, to Antwerp and then transported by train to one of two factories in Switzerland – in Orbe or Avenches- where they are roasted and put into capsules.

One of the conditions for Alvaro is he has to sign up to what Nespresso calls its AAA sustainable quality programme – it also rather pretentiously calls its different blends of coffees ‘Grand Crus’.

The programme covers anything from ensuring the proper treatment of workers to making sure the local eco-system is protected.

The minimum wage in Brazil is 724 real per month or just under £200. But workers get paid based on how many baskets of cherries they pick. Its backbreaking work but farmers insist the best pickers can earn a decent income.

The sustainability has also injected a dose of Swiss efficiency into Alvaro’s farm, boosting production.

Karsten Ranitzsch, Nespresso’s head of coffee, says: ‘Sustainability is not charity. It’s about protecting our supply.

The farmers live on the land, they understand it. This is about protecting the land and the supply of coffee for future generations.’

Coffee remains a tough business for farmers, who are at the whim of the weather and the price of coffee, made more volatile by market speculators.

But it is a game that Alvaro and thousands of farmers across Brazil simply have to win.